Saevus Corax Deals With The Dead - K.J. Parker

Saevus Corax Deals With the Dead is the latest from K.J. Parker, and the start of a new series from them, to boot. Not to speak out of school, but it’s another solid entry, bringing the trademark wry wit blended with occasional violence, entwined with a story with as many twists and turns as a…twisty, turny thing. I’ll be the first to admit that I was never quite sure where the tale was going to take me next, but that I absolutely enjoyed every second of finding out. 

As is typical for Parker, we have a protagonist whom we might charitably describe as “morally grey”, or less charitably as “a bit of an arsehole”. Saevus Corax, for it is he, makes up for it with both a bounty of charm, and a voice which is razor sharp, horribly cynical, and unforgiving of his own flaws. Saevus Corax may be an arsehole, but he knows that, and makes no apologies. Well, he might make an apology, but he’s still going to steal your horse. Or possibly hit you over the head and take your boots. Hard to say, really. For all that though, Saevus Corax is a charmer. He’s someone who likes to talk, who can make the glibbest lie seem plausible. And, in fairness to him, he’s also got a shiny trap of a mind, full of gears and wheels. Because you can always see him falling from one crisis to another, but what you can’t see is whether that particular crisis is also something he’s made into an opportunity. It is, to be honest, tricky to get one around on Saevus Corax, and he’d be the first to tell you so. It helps that he has a fun supporting cast, but if I’m honest, this is largely a one person show, a man thrown into the firmament by the vagaries of chance and his own survival strategies.

As usual with Parker, that firmament may end up being rather bigger than you expect. There’s a lot of world on display here, all of it clearly precision-crafted. We can wade through mud and blood and bodies, digging for teeth, straightening arrowheads, and asking questions like “Saevus Corax, would you say battlefield salvage is a good gig?”. Or we can approach lavish courts, and regal suites with high and oddly barred windows, to learn about how one nation  survives as a counterbalance between conflicting empires. We can talk about the economics of murder, the economics of nation-states, and how those probably aren’t quite the same thing. The sense of history is always there, in the grime and the dirt and the banal humanity amongst the grandeur, and the surprising divinity of the humane amongst the grime. It’s a sprawling world, from sea battles to mud puddles and back around again, and it’s a world that makes sense to itself, both immediately and on a larger scale. Each character is taking sensible steps, and together, they’re changing the weft and warp of their world - and occasionally we may pull our vantage back and be able to see that. Or perhaps not, this time. In any case, the world is richly imagined, vividly described, and I’m rather grateful I don’t live there.

I already alluded to the story, and honestly, that’s all I can do without giving something away. It begins on a battlefield, but inside the first twenty or so pages, we;re having expectations upended, and truths turned into lies (and, perhaps, back again later).  The story is at once personal, the story of Saevus Corax and how he got where he is, and epic in the sense that it’s about a world changing around a focal point, around central events - or just by chance. It’s a story that blends those two perfectly, makes you care, and is going to make you keep turning pages until you’re done. K.J. Parker at his best, and that’s saying something.